DOSSIER · PGVECTOR
Ask the Archive — A Second Brain
The build log of the chatbot over my own site: hybrid retrieval, a four-rung model ladder, every bug it took to get there, and a running cost of zero — now with every essay, feedback and evals.
◆ Pune, India · 18°34′N · a field almanac, now an island
A developer who runs at dawn and reads past midnight.
I build data pipelines by day, research how citizens keep agency in an AI world, log the miles, and write it all down. This island is one ordinary, full day — scroll, and the clock turns from the dawn run to the observatory.
- Races run
- 21
- 10K to a 50K ultra
- Books finished
- 48
- in English & मराठी
- Forts & summits
- 18
- across the Sahyadris
- Micro-posts
- 1.6k+
- and 86,789 long-form words
About · the whole person
I'm Sanket — a software developer from Pune who never stops moving. By day I'm a full-stack developer and data engineer at Bridgenext, building DORA-metric pipelines and ETL flows across the GitLab API, AWS Lambda, Databricks and Tableau.
From April 2024 to May 2025 I was a NAST Fellow at The Takshashila Institution, researching citizen agency in AI governance for public deployments — the intersection of technology, society and public policy.
I run five days a week, chase Sahyadri summits on weekends, and read obsessively. Keeping a record is how I stay honest with myself — so every number on this island comes from something I published.
· The dawn run · the river mouth
From a first nervous 5K to a 50K ultra.
Twenty-one races and counting — 8 km along the river before the city wakes. Running five days a week isn't training for a number; it's how the day gets its shape.
Personal bests
| Full marathon | 5:05 hrs | Tata Mumbai 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Half marathon | 1:59 hrs | Hyderabad 2025 |
| 10K | 0:55 min | IPA Neerathon 2026 |
| Longest | 50 km | Tata Ultra, Lonavala |
Races per year
Five cities: Pune · Mumbai · Hyderabad · Satara · Lonavala. 2024 was the peak — eight races, including the step up to the ultra distance.
· The studio · the harbour
Data pipelines by day, and the things that shipped.
DORA metrics, ETL and Databricks at Bridgenext. Nine years of roles, a stack rated honestly, and the builds that went live — counted rather than claimed.
The record
- Feb 2024 →Software Developer · Bridgenext DORA metrics · ETL · GitLab API · AWS Lambda · Databricks · Tableau
- 2021 – 2024Software Engineer · Emtec Inc. Next.js · GraphQL · Spring Boot · FastAPI
- 2021B.Tech, Computer Science Rajarambapu Institute of Technology, Sangli
- 2019Designer · TEDxRajarambapuIT Lead designer for the event
- 2018 – 2021Social Media Manager · VivekVahini Ran social media at RIT
- 2017 – 2019Team Lead · RIT Media Cell Projects, events, workshops, design team
The stack, rated honestly — five dots means I'd teach it
- Languages
- Python
- JavaScript
- SQL
- Java
- C
- TypeScript
- Data & analytics
- Pandas
- Snowflake
- Databricks
- Apache Kafka
- Tableau
- NumPy
- Cloud & DevOps
- AWS
- Terraform
- Kubernetes
- AI & tooling
- Cursor
- Google Gemini
- MCP
Also in daily use, deliberately unrated: React · Next.js · Node.js · FastAPI · Express · GraphQL · Spring Boot · Tailwind CSS · Cloudflare · Git · PostgreSQL · Supabase. Plus 11 certifications, including the Politics & Policy of Artificial Intelligence.
· The library · a chapter over lunch
48 books, and the lines that stayed with me.
A chapter over lunch, in English and मराठी. Technology and AI together are the largest block — but they don't have the shelf to themselves.
The shelf, by genre
A book can carry more than one genre, so the bars add up to more than 48.
The archive wing
Ask the Archive is a chatbot over my own records — the books, races, forts and every essay — built on hybrid retrieval over one Postgres, at a running cost of zero. The dossier, the audit, the deck and the long scroll all live here, next to the shelf it reads from.
· The fort · weekends belong to the Sahyadris
18 forts and summits, and one 22-hour night march.
Forts, ridgelines, and the long historic routes that ask for everything you've got. The mesa in the middle of the island is every Deccan trap I've walked up, stacked one contour at a time.
Routes that stayed
- Panhala → Pawankhind 22 hrs · overnight — retracing Baji Prabhu's stand; the one every trekker measures the rest against
- Katraj → Sinhgad 6 hrs · hard
- Kalavantin Durga the rock-cut steps
- Jivdhan hill fort
- Bhimashankar → Padarwadi forest descent
- Forts & summits
- 18
- Longest single trek
- 22h
- Still on the list
- ∞
· The commons · research, people, policy
Who keeps a say when the system is rolled out to them?
As a NAST Fellow at The Takshashila Institution (April 2024 – May 2025), I researched citizen agency in AI governance for public deployments — how people keep meaningful say over automated systems that are rolled out to them rather than chosen by them.
The same question runs through the websites and the data work under the banyan: foundation sites in two languages, a survey of 281 Pawra households across seven Nandurbar villages, and a sourced look at India's ethanol push. Graduate Certificate in Technology & Policy, Takshashila, 2024.
· The pavilion · unwinding
A game about the screen you're looking at.
The Wanderer's Digital Escape is a quarter-hour narrative game about digital wellbeing — four worlds, four meters, and a Flourishing Score at the end. The orb by the pier is its Three.js prototype: your inner state as a living 3D orb.
· The lighthouse · one more post before lights out
1,600+ posts, and I'm not done writing.
Long essays on tech, society and policy; short daily micro-posts; developer deep-dives. I write across platforms because different thoughts want different rooms.
| Substack · The Wanderer | 68 posts | 65,366 words |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress | 25 posts | 21,423 words |
| 100 Days to Offload ↗ | 1,631 micro-posts | the daily habit |
Long-form words per year
Developer writing lives on Medium, Dev.to and Hashnode — tutorials and deep-dives for other builders.
· The observatory · reading past midnight
What I'm doing right now.
A now page — a snapshot of this season, not a résumé.
- Building a blog & talk on AI tools for students and teachers.
- Training five days a week — chasing the next race.
- Writing through 100 Days to Offload — fifty long posts so far in 2026.
- Reading toward book #49, always mid-chapter.
Across the water ↗ — the rest of me lives on sankettambare.in
Where I write & where to find me
The whole map · everything on the island
Every page and project, in one list.
Things I built you can play with
AUDIT · INGESTION
What the Archive Knows
An audit of the chatbot's blind spots: which data it cannot see, what 100,199 words of blog text cost to add, and the incremental pipeline, richer answers and feedback loop that close the gaps.
DECK · HTML
Ask the Archive — The Deck
Twenty-nine slides from the ground up: years of records, one Postgres, the chatbot, its sources, thumbs-up feedback, the admin controls and a v1→v17 timeline.
STORY · DATA
Ask the Archive — From the Ground Up
The same story as one scrolling page, every chart drawn from the live database and the changelog, in light and dark.
DECK · HTML
About Me — Interactive Deck
A 12-slide visual deck of who I am — engineering, research, running, trekking, writing. Arrow-key navigable.
DECK · SVG
The Digital Hub — An Illustrated Tour
Thirty hand-drawn slides through sankettambare.in: six regions, one Postgres, eight years of records and the chatbot that answers from them — with a clickable map, a journey that plays itself and a passport that stamps as you go.
GAME · REACT 18
The Wanderer's Digital Escape
A ~15-min narrative browser game on digital wellbeing — four worlds, four meters, a Flourishing Score.
PROTOTYPE · THREE.JS
The Self — Orb Prototype
A Three.js experiment: your inner state as a living 3D orb responding to four wellbeing meters.
DATA VIZ · CHART.JS
Adivasi Survey Dashboard
Bilingual (मराठी ⇄ EN) dashboard of a 281-household Pawra survey across 7 Nandurbar villages — 28 charts.
INFOGRAPHIC · SVG
A Developer, Measured
Nine years of roles, a stack rated honestly and 86,789 published words — the developer story told in charts.
DECK · HTML
Projects, Reborn
Twelve slides on rebuilding /projects — one rigid grid into four filterable views, free text into real dates, and the three bugs it uncovered.
DECK · HTML
The Long Way Round
Twelve slides on scrolling one lap of the Earth — fitting 320 million pixels in a browser, and the arithmetic error it caught.
LIVE APP · REACT ↗
RunSmart
Get me my training plan — full and half marathon plans generated from a single time trial.
CODE · REACT + FIREBASE ↗
Social-Ape
A small social platform for human apes — posts, likes and notifications on a Firebase back end.
CODE · REACT + FIREBASE ↗
Expense Manager
Expense tracking for construction firms — sites, vendors and running costs in one ledger.
Websites I've designed & built
DESIGN DOC · DECK
The Wanderer's Atlas — Dossier
The feature dossier behind my site redesign: one theme end to end, orbit-to-page navigation, locked decisions.
DECK · HTML
Day Island — the Redesign Deck
How this homepage became an ink-drawn 3D island: every prompt and design question, the paths not taken (Blender, Zdog), the ink renderer, and the bugs the build caught.
DECK · HTML
Learning Hub — Sixty Days, in Public
Fifteen illustrated slides on the tracker for my AI Architect 60-day plan: the idea, a tour of the app, and how one YAML file, Astro and Supabase run it.
LIVE SITE · ASTRO 7 ↗
RunFolio — the race portfolio
Log a race in under a minute, photographs first — then one link that carries your races as a grid, a ledger or statistics.
DECK · ASTRO 7
RunFolio — Every Finish, Framed
The six-panel intro deck behind it: why the record scatters at the finish line, and what runs under the hood. Hand-drawn SVG throughout.
DATA STORY · ASTRO 7 ↗
E20 ka Chakravyuha
India hit 20% ethanol blending five years early and sugar fell to a five-year low in the same season — a sourced, chart-led look at how much the two have to do with each other.
DECK · HTML
E20 ka Chakravyuha — The Deck
Twelve slides on the ethanol-versus-sugar trade-off and the build behind it: hand-drawn SVG charts, the feedstock flip, and a 50 KB JavaScript budget.
SPEC · ASTRO 7
Antyodaya Website — Features & Spec
The Gadchiroli foundation site in full: 15 public routes, a 23-screen admin CMS, 39 Postgres tables, two languages.
ARCHITECTURE · ZERO JS
Yung Foundation — End to End
The site at v0.5.0: all 15 public routes, what staff can edit, and the zero-JavaScript architecture underneath.